The most colossal of the blunders of the Septuagint translators, supplemented by the most insidious, persistent and purposeful falsification of text, is instanced in the false translation of the notoriously false pretended "prophecy" of Isaiah vii, 14,-frauds which have had the most disastrous and fatal consequences for Christianity, and to humanity under its blight; the present exposure of which should instanter destroy the false Faith built on these frauds.

The Greek priest who forged the "Gospel according to St. Matthew," having before him the false Septuagint translation of Isaiah, fables the Jewish Mary yielding to the embraces of the Angel Gabriel to engender Jesus, and backs it up by appeal to the Septuagint translation of Isaiah vii, 14:

Isaiah's original Hebrew, with the mistranslated words underscored, reads: "Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel";-which, falsely translated by the false pen of the pious translators, runs thus in the English: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. vii, 14.) The Hebrew words ha-almah mean simply the young woman; and harah is the Hebrew past or perfect tense, "conceived," which in Hebrew, as in English, represents past and completed action. Honestly translated, the verse reads: "Behold, the young woman has conceived-[is with child)-and beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel."

Almah means simply a young woman, of marriageable age, whether married or not, or a virgin or not; in a broad general sense exactly like girl or maid in English, when we say shop-girl, parlor-maid, bar-maid, without reference to or vouching for her technical virginity, which, in Hebrew, is always expressed by the word bethulah. But in the Septuagint translation into Greek, the Hebrew almah was erroneously rendered into the Greek parthenos, virgin, with the definite article 'ha' in Hebrew, and e in Greek, (the), rendered into the indefinite "a" by later falsifying translators. (See Is It God's Word? pp. 277-279; EB. ii, 2162; New Commentary on the Holy Scripture, Pt. I, p. 439.) And St. Jerome falsely used the Latin word virgo.

"As early as the second century B.C.," says the distinguished Hebrew scholar and critic, Salomon Reinach, "the Jews perceived the error and pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her error." (Orpheus, p, 197.) The truth of this accusation of conscious persistence in known error through the centuries is proved by confession of St. Jerome, who made the celebrated Vulgate translation from the Hebrew into Latin, and intentionally "clung to the error," though Jerome well knew that it was an error and false; and thus he perpetuated through fifteen hundred years the myth of the "prophetic virgin birth" of Jesus called Christ.

Being criticized by many for this falsification, St. Jerome thus replies to one of his critics, Juvianus: "I know that the Jews are accustomed to meet us with the objection that in Hebrew the word Almah does not mean a virgin, but a young woman. And, to speak truth, a virgin is properly called Bethulah, but a young woman, or a girl, is not Almah, but Naarah"! (Jerome, Adv. Javianum I, 32; N&PNF, vi, 370.) So insistent was the criticism, that he was driven to write a book on the subject, in which he makes a very notable confession of the inherent incredibility of the Holy Ghost paternity-story "For who at that time would have believed the Virgin's word that she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, and that the angel Gabriel had come and announced the purpose of God? and would not all have given their opinion against her as an adulteress, like Susanna? For at the present day, now that the whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue, that when Isaiah says, 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, not a virgin, that is to say, the word is ALMAH, not BETHULAH"! (Jerome, The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, N&PNF, vi, 336.)

So the Greek Father or priest who forged the false "virgin-birth" interpolation into the manuscript of "Matthew," drags in maybe ignorantly the false Septuagint translation of Isaiah vii, 14, which the Latin Father St. Jerome purposely perpetuated as a pious "lie to the glory of God." The Catholic and King James Versions purposely retain this false translation; the Revised Version keeps it in, but with a gesture of honesty, which is itself a fraud, sticks into the margin in fine type, after the words "a virgin" and "shall conceive," the words, "Or, the maiden is with child and beareth,"-which not one in thousands would ever see or understand the significance of. So it is not some indefinite "a virgin" who 750 years in the future "shall conceive" and "shall bear" a son whose name she "shall call" Immanuel, Jesus; but it was some known and definite young female, married or un-married-but not a "virgin"-who had already conceived and was already pregnant, and who beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel, ... who should be the "sign" which "my lord" should give to Ahaz of the truth of Isaiah's false prophecy regarding the pending war with Israel and Syria, as related in Isaiah vii, and of which the total falsity is proven in 2 Chronicles xxviii, as all may read.

Although Papal Infallibility has declared that "it will never be lawful to grant ... that the sacred writers could have made a mistake" (Leo XIII, Encyc. Provid. Deus; CE. ii, 543), yet, the fraud being notorious and exposed to the scorn of the world, and being driven by force of modern criticism, CE. definitely and positively-though with the usual clerical soft-soaping, confesses this age-long clerical fraud and falsification of Holy Writ, and relegates it to the junk-heap of discredited-but not discarded-dogmatic myth:

"Modern theology does not grant that Isaiah vii, 14, contains a real prophecy fulfilled in the virgin birth of Christ; it must maintain, therefore, that St. Matthew misunderstood the passage when he said: 'Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, etc."! (CE. xv, 451.)

Thus is apparent, and confessed, the dishonesty of "Matthew" and of the Church of Christ in perverting this idle, false and falsified text of Isaiah into a "prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ," and in persisting in retaining this falsity in their dishonest Bibles as the basis of their own bogus theology unto this day of the Twentieth Century. The Church, full knowing its falsity, yet, clings to this precious lie of Virgin Birth and all the concatenated consequences. Thus it declares its own condemnation as false. Some other viciously false translations of sacred Scripture will be duly noticed in their place.